The first thing that hits a foreigner when he comes to Tver is the fact that the average woman here is not average. She is, in fact, stunningly beautiful!

Now, truly beautiful women exist almost everywhere, but only in very small numbers. Here they comprise a large majority of the women under forty, and a substantial percentage of those older than that.

Once you get used to the Cyrillic lettering on the signs and the beauty of some of the ancient, reconditioned buildings, a street scene in Tver is not much different from one in most American medium sized cities. The old people look like old people. The younger men look like white men everywhere, except that a quarter of them are in a bewildering variety of uniforms, often with hilarious military hats that at first I thought were part of some theatrical satire, but no. They are serious about wearing them.

Then a young woman walks by, and she GLOWS!

She looks as though Industrial Light and Magic has done some sort of special effect job on her, and she is surrounded by a sort of moving, flickering, darkly radiating aurora. From the polished edges if the soles of her boots to her hair with never a single strand out of place, she sparkles! Every shade and texture of her clothing from her perfect nylons, her miniskirt, her semi- transparent blouse, to her purse and accessories have been carefully considered for it's cumulative effect on you. She has agonized for hours -- no, weeks! -- over the precise shade of every part of her makeup, and has obviously spent hours getting everything perfect before daring to step out of doors.

Once, I was in an office while a half dozen office girls were getting ready to take their morning break at a coffee shop in their own building. They spent ten minutes prepping for this excursion down the hall. I remember one lovely blond Russian girl with clear blue eyes, a perfect complexion, and an upper-class British accent. She'd wet a bit of tissue paper, and was carefully dusting the edges of the soles of her boots. Then, their personal preparations over, they carefully checked out each other, so that no flaw could embarrass the group. I tell you that no platoon of soldiers getting ready for an inspection by a General Officer was ever more careful about their appearance.

And these girls were just going down the hall for a cup of tea !

Consider the financial cost of all of this. Russia is not a rich country, and these girls were not individually wealthy. They were only earning about five dollars a day, and rather than getting any help from their families, most of them were helping to support them. Yet the boots they wore often cost $200 a pair. Other summer time clothing, often of silk, could easily cost another $200-$300. Their appearance is so important to them that they are often wearing their life's savings.

Nor are these girls getting help from their boyfriends. Despite the sexy clothing, sexual and social mores in Tver resemble those of America in the 1950's. There are prostitutes in Tver, but they DON'T dress all that well.

Winter clothing is far more extravagant yet. My two young translators each have four fur, or fur and leather coats, that cost them a minimum of $300 each. My cleaning lady comes over twice a week with my carefully ironed underwear and such while wearing a full length fur coat that my mother would have drooled over, but would have finally decided she couldn't afford.

Even my fur hat cost me $55, but a real Shapka, the sort that most working men here wear, with working flaps for the ears, neck and face, would have cost me $135. Yes, mine is mink, but so are theirs.

But most men don't much notice clothing and makeup. We are far more interested in the girl inside, and that is where the Ladies of Tver truly shine.

First off, the great majority of them are healthy and fit, with hard bodies that the typical American Lady Couch Potato can only dream about.

(Most Russian men have hard bodies, too, but they are not the subject of this letter.)

Russian women are very health conscious, and feel free to lecture to you if you are eating too much meat, or being too free with the salt shaker. They understand nutrition, and eat a healthy, balanced diet.

Most of them have a regular exercise routine, and despite the general poorness of the country, spas, gymnasiums, ice skating rinks, swimming pools, saunas, stadiums and various sport facilities are available to everyone at little or no cost.

But most importantly, they walk. They may have a driver's license, but they won't use it. When you ask, they'll tell you that it isn't ladylike to drive a car, or that women are all terrible drivers, and a danger on the road(!)

So they walk. A typical young woman might walk an hour or two from home to school in the morning. (Tver is a college town, and many schools are inexpensive, or free.) Then she will walk another hour or so from school to work, and after that will spend yet another hour walking home to spruce up for her date with you. Since she is usually embarrassed about the shabby place she has to live in, she will walk another few miles to where she wanted you pick her up.

And when you do so, and ask her what she would like to do, she will usually tell you that she wants to go for a walk!

But, on the second or third date, when she finally permits your arm around her waist, and you feel that thin layer of infinitely soft skin sliding smoothly over her firm, hard muscles and --- well, I've never felt anything like that on an American girl. I suppose that there are some, but I've never touched one.

And that is still only a part of the story. These women would be beautiful in rags. These women would be beautiful if they were couch potatoes. Most of these women would be beautiful even if they were fat.

These are genetically beautiful women.

And how, in our Darwinian Universe could all this take place?

Well, I have a theory about that.

Throughout history, the Russian Army has been most callous about it's use of it's soldiers.

In Czarist times, a company of troops would come to a village and draft as many as half of the men. These men were marched off on a twenty year involuntary enlistment, and very few of them ever saw home again.

This meant, among other things, that half the young women in the village never got married, and that the men who were left behind, perhaps not the best of specimens, had their choice among a large number of girls. It is most likely that it was the less pretty women who stayed single, and that only the beautiful ones had children.

This brutal process continued well into this century, and probably hasn't stopped yet. In World War II, Russia lost perhaps twenty two million soldiers, due to the unbelievable stupidity of its officers and the criminal mentality of its government. They only killed about two million Germans in return.

Be that as it may, this meant that twenty two million young Russian women went without husbands. They weren't the pretty ones. The men who made it back could pick and choose in a wonderfully target rich environment. What's more, even after they were married, even if they both had full time jobs, the wife was expected to do all the housework and take care of the kids while her husband drank vodka and read the paper. If she complained, there were plenty of extras around to replace her with.

In the process, Russian men developed some very bad habits. Few of them seem to appreciate the magnificent women around them. Many are on drugs. Many times more are drunks who expect someone else to take care of them. Oh, most of the younger men are big and strong, the children of many generations of survivors, but they often appear to be lacking in moral fiber, cohesiveness, and simple brain power.

For hundreds of years, Russia has not only been genetically selecting for beautiful women, it has been training women to make themselves as beautiful and as desirable as possible. Many generations of Russian mothers have been telling their daughters, "Do you want to end up as poor and as lonely as your Maiden Aunt Olga? Then you better make yourself as beautiful as you can! You'd better learn how to make yourself as desirable to a man as you can, and learn how to take care of him once you get married, or you will have only sadness in your life!"

And the girls looked around them, and saw that what their mothers were telling them was true. For many generations, they have been acting on that advice, and handing it down to their daughters, with the result being the Russia of today.

The history of America has been quite different. Unlike the Russians, we have almost always fought our wars very wisely.

(The exception was the Civil War, when the North was saddled with Abe Lincoln, who did his best to be as criminally savage as Stalin was. If he murdered far fewer than Stalin did, it was because of the decency of the politicians and Generals around him, and not his doing at all.)

We learned our basic military lessons from the Indians who, unencumbered by Philosophers, Priests, and Academics, knew that the purpose of war is to kill the other guy before he has a chance to kill you. You train hard for it, get plenty of the best weapons you possibly can, and then do your best to shoot the bastard in the back and get home alive.

(Most of the current stuff you hear about the Noble Savage is horseshit, and warmed over horseshit, at that. The Indians were stone age savages, exactly like our own ancestors.)

Americans have never believed in fighting fair. We believe in fighting to win. The idea is not to die for our country. The idea is to make HIM die for HIS country. Sometimes, we even manage to do it without having to fight at all.

In World War II, we took out the Japanese almost single handed, and did as much damage to the Germans as the Russians did, while loosing only one and a half percent as many men as the Russians. Three hundred eighty thousand killed compared to their twenty two million. Most of our men came home to their families, most of our girls got married.

For reasons best understood by others, a town, a territory, a state gets its basic character from the first people who settle there. After that, even though the first settlers die or move away, and are replaced by others of different backgrounds, cultures and even races, the fundamental character of the area often changes very little.

America started in the East and moved West. The first people who moved into an area were mostly trappers, hunters, miners, loggers, and then farmers. These were largely male occupations, and in many new territories, the number of available men outnumbered the available women by as many as fifty to one.

This was a target rich environment for the women.

A girl with the most sub-standard of equipment could ask for just about anything and get it. I point out that the first states to give women the right to vote were not in the East, where women outnumbered the men, but in the Far West, where they were a small minority.

If a man really needs something (like a woman) he will do those things that are necessary to get it.

The result is that American women developed the same sort of bad habits that the Russian men did. America selected for pushy, annoying women.

Now, American men and Russian women are discovering each other. It is no great wonder that last year, some sixty five thousand of each flavor found each other and got married.

Gentlemen, the cold war is over.

We won.

To get your share of the booty, come to Russia.

She's waiting for you.

P.S.

Three years later, I am sad to relate that Russian women are dressing in a far less revealing fashion now.

And my theory about how the lack of Russian men was caused by the military might have been true fifty years ago, but they aven't been in a big one since then.

Yet in my daughter's high school, girls outnumber boys by three to one. The ladies are not happy about this. They claim that the same situation exists everywhere. Now, I'm confused again.